Interview with RED LIGHT PROPERTIES: UNFINISHED BUSINESS’ Dan Goldman

Dan Goldman's Red Light Properties: Unfinished Business is a supernatural comic book story that started as a web comic before being collected together via Goldman's Kinjin Storylab. Recently, the graphic novel was nominated for the 2026 Eisner Awards in the category of Best Publication Design, and I had a chance to catch up with Goldman to discuss the paranormal, developing this story, and what's next:

Where did the idea come to mix paranormal with real estate for this story?

Dan Goldman: It happened slowly, over years. Growing up, my mom was a realtor in South Florida, and she was always telling me crazy realtor stories, starting in the mid-’80s bubble through the subprime mortgage crisis of the ‘00s. That gave Miami its own life story for me, watching it react and change.

Parallel to that, I’ve lived in a few haunted places throughout the years, and I’ve spent a lot of time wondering about what physical spaces can hold onto after we’ve gone, because that idea exists in nearly every culture. 

Putting those two things together, it made sense for Miami to be the lens I examine that question. That was really Red Light Properties’ genesis. Then one day my main characters Jude and Cecilia just showed up for work and everything clicked into place.

Are you a believer in the paranormal? If so, what was the experience that made you a believer?

Dan Goldman: Paranormal in the sense of extrasensory phenomena, of things existing beyond the range of human perception? Absolutely. Because our scientific consensus of what “exists” is based on our narrow, human-centric senses. I mean, dogs hear far more than we can, insects use pheromones as language, and forest trees are networked by mycelial networks that we couldn’t imagine recently. What about outside of corporeal bodies? What about the rest of the universe? It’s hubris to assume this is all there is.

Did I have an experience that made me this way? I can’t point to a single event; I think I was always open to other definitions. As far as believing in spirits, my grandfather died when I was five, and for the next few years I used to see him looking back at me from mirrors. Did he hang around a while before passing on? Did I grow out of my childhood connection to him? 

But also, does it even matter? Isn’t the “real” world just dull without that? It’s way more fascinating to stay open to these questions and allow curiosity to expand your world into new levels of meaning, of history, of being. 

Because what’s the alternative to that? Fold your arms across your chest and shut down any other possibilities? Once you know you’re right about it all and they’re wrong, you can focus on what really matters, like comparing gasoline prices and finding a parking spot at the supermarket with minimal walking.

While researching and developing this story, did you draw from any historical or personal experiences when it comes to real estate or the paranormal?

Dan Goldman: Good question, Jonathan. In Red Light Properties’ first season, my story “Goonight, Donnie Cheng” is inspired by the 1981 kidnapping of Adam Walsh, which was an international news story in the day. He was taken ten minutes from where we lived at a mall we used to shop at. I didn’t reference that case in my story, but for the gruesome details of how his remains were found. That story scared me more as a child – that strangers wanted to steal you from your family and murder you – than any horror book or film.

As far as the real estate in Red Light Properties, inspired but never based on things. They’re all stories I made up, amalgams of places and people I’ve heard about or known, connected to things I’ve caught out of the corner of my eye and made notes on my phone about. 

Jude and Cecilia Tobin are characters that have been with you for a while. Why are these characters, their dynamic, and building this world still so exciting for you to explore?

Dan Goldman: They’re two married halves of a dream, always in opposition with each other: the artist and the hustler, the believer and the cynic, the mouth and the hands. Somewhere in the middle of them is definitely me, the same way some slice of me is the core of all the characters of Red Light Properties’ world.

I like to set up my stories and world around ideas, invent characters from there, then set those characters against each other. And not in a binary hero/villain dynamic either; it’s a more interesting world when you marry into the conflict for love, but that came with complications you have to learn to live with somehow. The stakes are so high there that Jude and Ceci just sizzle off each other whenever they’re too close. In that way, these stories almost write themselves.

Congratulations on the Eisner nomination! Can you talk a bit about the path of this story going from concept to webcomic to print? What can our readers expect from the print editions?

Dan Goldman: It’s been a long road, starting with our launch as a webcomic on Tor.com in 2010. The series jumped to Kindle and Comixology, then a slim IDW collection of part of the story. Bringing it back became clear to me during the pandemic because the series wouldn’t let me go.

I launched the publishing arm of Kinjin Storylab in 2024 and Kickstarted our Unfinished Business hardcover (collecting all of Season 1) specifically to bring Red Light Properties back into the world. But now that I’m a publisher, I’ve got a handful of projects outside of this series cooking, as well as the future for Jude and Cecilia. 

Can you give a tease of what's next for Red Light Properties now that Season Two is underway?

Dan Goldman: I don’t want to spoil, but I will vague-tease. Many points of conflict already in play will start closing in. New threats and allies will appear. The volume of everything is gonna get louder. What started as a workplace horror-dramedy gets a lot deeper, wider. Weirder and more dangerous in Season 2, and where it ends is very far from where we began. You’re not even ready for Season 3.

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"Red Light Properties: Unfinished Business follows Jude and Cecilia as they navigate the supernatural wreckage of family, capitalism, psychedelia, memory, and the emotional debris people leave behind after they die. The series was first introduced in 2010 as a web comic on Tor.com before launching through Kickstarter in 2025, where it was recognized as a “Project We Love.”

Via Kinjin Storylab, Goldman invites readers to follow along as the stories unfold from episode drops to bingeable arcs, before collecting them into meticulously designed hardcover and slipcase editions with an immersive, psychedelic visual identity."

To learn more, visit: Kinjin Storylab